Thursday, June 17, 2021

The new Q65 protocol is some sort of black magic!

 The N4EME grid expedition to FN57/FN66 is in full swing, this week finishing up their FN57 stint. I worked them on 6m MS shortly after they arrived at that location. Later they got 2m working and we tried doing some MSK meteor scatter, but that didn't end up working. 

I got on the chat page again this morning and tried with them, no luck. K1OR, who was at the keyboard, suggested we try the new Q65 protocol provided by Joe Taylor in WSJT-X. After fumbling around with the radio and setting I finally got it together and successfully worked N4EME! 

There are several things worth notiing, first of which is they are roughly 380 miles to the north. That's a pretty tough path on a good day. Second, I have a fairly modest station, 200W into 12 elements at only about 25-30 ft. 

After a few sequences I noticed I decoded them, but I hadn't entered their info into WSJT-X, so it was not using A Priori decoding. It took me by surprise because I didn't see anything at all on the waterfall display!


But, if you look very closely, you can see a slight disturbance in the noise around 1500hz. If I zoom in you can see it, barely:

Apparently that is enough signal for WSJT-X to decode!




From what I understand (I have a lot more reading to do) the q3 indicates that it's using message re-construction from previous (in the sequence) decodes. 

Thanks to John and Paul for getting me a new, very rare, grid on 2m. With any luck we'll do the same next week when they are in FN66. 

-Steve





1 comment:

  1. TNX fer ur C info using MS and the the new Q65 and ur new Grid. It has been a few years since I last used WSJT Meteor Scatter and one certainly has to check for the "latest and greatest" new modes prefered for MS. Unfortunately, many 6m websites are quickly outdated with MS mode info, however the guys on Ping Jockey are always very helpful in recommending the `MS mode du jour`. 73 es tnx agn.

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